Understanding American Airport Security Following 9/11 (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Understanding American Airport Security Following 9/11 (2019)

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I stopped flying in 2003 as a direct result of the TSA. I used to fly everywhere with a mandolin, as it would fit into the overhead compartments and allowed me to participate in the music scene at my destination.

After the security theater was in full swing, I got stopped at a security checkpoint and was told that I could not take my spare set of strings onto the plane, because they might be used as a garrote.

Knowing that I hadn’t changed them for a while, I asked whether it would be okay for me to sit there and change them. They agreed. So I took 15 minutes and put the new strings on my mandolin. That appeased them, and I continued on my long journey home.

So, the strings were still allowed through… on my instrument. Where I could have removed them and fashioned a garrote just as easily as when they were new in the bag.

The terrorists won. I never flew again.

The kind of stand I and many others I'm sure would like to take but I, like most people I imagine, fly to do important things in the limited time I have, for which air travel is one hell of a luxury that makes it possible at all. Family, friends, personally significant trips. I don't fly for business but I figure that's a very important reason for many.

They have most of us bent over a barrel. No free market to be seen here.

Unless you count fuckhead rent seekers like Clear exploiting that the line to queue for security is technically in the airport's purview. Clear and the airports that participate are offensive.

>I, like most people I imagine, fly to do important things in the limited time I have, for which air travel is one hell of a luxury that makes it possible at all. Family, friends, personally significant trips.

If I didn't fly, I'd have to take a ship to visit my family, and that would probably take weeks and cost a fortune. I guess if you never leave the US, this kind of stand makes sense, but when you live on different continents it's not practical at all.

The difference was not the location of the strings. To the TSA, the difference was your expertise in being able to change them on the spot. You proved that you are a mandolin player, and not merely an assassin who is carrying one as a cover story (but you could be both.)

It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth. Do we have a mundane or nefarious purpose?

Yet I can’t drink part of my water bottle to prove that it’s not an explosive.

I thought they don't allow water bottles so you don't mess up on the airplane.

Most airports provide a water fountain, often with a dedicated water bottle filling spout, right after security.

I flew Scoot from SE Asia (Singapore or Bangkok, can't remember which) to Germany back in 2019, and they had one functioning water fountain between security and boarding. Needless to say, everyone wanted to fill their water bottles and the queue got long. So long that the plane started boarding before it was half done. Aircrew staff were shouting at people to stop filling their water bottles and get on the plane. We passengers, realising that for once we had some power, refused. We knew they couldn't take off with our baggage but not us, and getting our baggage off the plane would take longer than the delay to just fill our bottles. So we ignored the shouting and filled our bottles. The plane took off 15 mins late (iirc). It felt great :)

I have no idea if it affected Scoot's policy on charging for water on the flight, or the airport's attitude to water fountains. I like to think it did.

Flying out of Panama this year, we discovered that they don't care about water bottles. I would love for airport security to finally get over this idea that water bottles might potentially contain explosives.

This. In most European airports I empty my bottle before security, and refill after.

I don’t know if it’s different in the US, but here in Europe you can bring water bought after going through security. I think it’s more a means to make people buy things at the airport at inflated prices.

You can buy water in the us airports, or bring an empty bottle and fill it. And besides they HAND you a cup of water on the plane if you ask. Had nothing to do with making a "mess" not did it have anything to do with forcing you to purchase anything. It is merely because it might be liquid explosives.

If I'm going to blow up the plane I'm on, maybe I wouldn't care about poisoning myself a few hours before? As long as its slow enough acting.

This kind of insane fear is why flying (especially in/from/to America) has become so miserable.

Yeah anyone motivated to take down a plane can just buy a surface-to-air missile for a few grand.

You can't get those on aliexpress, but you can get drones. And laser pointers, a surprisingly effective anti-pilot weapon. And, of course, in America you've got a constitutional entitlement to as many small arms as you think you might need for ground-based terrorist attacks.

12 Monkeys https://youtu.be/ok9tswBa-ZI

I think the idea is that if you just take a mandolin through security you wouldn't have been stopped in the first place, even though it has metal strings as a component that are trivially removed (much more difficult to put back on, but you don't need to do that step).

You have an awful lot of faith in the TSA.

Isn’t a belt, a shoelace or any one of a thousand other things also a garrotte?

> It's for this reason, supposedly, that we're asked to boot our laptops and so forth.

Not at all.

The TSA got credible information from intelligence agencies that there is a group who has the plan to manufacture bombs which are disguised as laptops. They would be manufactured such that they appear normal to the commonly used screening technologies. This is what we know. From here on it is speculation.

The easiest way to accomplish this is by replacing the battery of a laptop with explosives. You wouldn't want to have a mix of real battery and explosive though because that would be very hard to hide seamlessly on a scanner. So the theory is that these laptops would not function, and when being turned on they would appear to be out of battery.

So no. Being able to boot your laptop does not prove that you are not an "assassin". It proves that it has functioning batteries inside.

Besides how silly that is? I wager that we could teach mandolin stringing and laptop booting to anyone in an hour tops. Attacker or not. In fact anyone who can chew gum and walk at the same time can probably string a mandolin in 15 minutes (not to the exacting expectations of a real mandolin player, but to appear competent enough to a screening person.)

It's BS solution and another "security by obscurity" theatre since laptops like Thinkpad X250 have 2 batteries, one internal and one external which is removable. This is another proof that this "security" doesn't work, and anyone willing can go around it.

Seriously? We got "credible information?" Did we? I've never been asked to boot my laptop. One been asked to turn on other things. Never a laptop. And it isn't like you could design a laptop to work with a bomb in it. Or maybe your battery is dead.

You agree with me; why all the downvotes.

While this sounds great, it's bullshit and we both know it.

Shoelaces are allowed, without proving that I am a skilled shoe player. So the rest is just bullshit make-works projects.

A typical case of Security through obscurity, just making an illusion of safety that anyone willing can workaround.

For me, it was when COVID was killing about three airliners worth of Americans a day but enforcing the water bottle rules (used in 0 attacks for a total of 0 fatalities) was far more important than anything to do with COVID.

The Germanwings incident. I don't know how many lives were saved by locking the pilots in since 9/11, but I sure know how many were taken....

What are the airline security protocols like for domestic flights in China?

Enforcing the water bottle rule sells a lot of beverages at the airport, with a nice margin because the customers have no options

These days there are water bottle filling stations in almost all airport terminals.

15 years later.

Liquid explosives have been used in multiple attacks, one of which was almost successful (but not in the end). The rationale for banning larger quantities of liquid are rational and done in response to a specific incident:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...

> one of which was almost successful

Yes, that's what I mean: there's only one near-attack, and since then we've banned all liquids for all flights at a cost of god knows how many benefits.

> The rationale for banning larger quantities of liquid are rational

There's zero cost-benefit analysis for this.

Speaking of instruments and the TSA, the first few times I flew with a brass instrument I accidentally forgot to remove my [over-the-limit] ounces of lubricant with explosive vapors, as well as the large blade I use for cutting strings and other instrument maintenance. After that I started doing it on purpose just to prove to myself that if I wanted to become a terrorist it would take less than zero effort to just hide everything in a French Horn. It’s such a pathetic joke, and you’re right that the Taliban won.

Some years ago I was flying home from a large European airport. Unbeknownst to me there had been a bomb threat, so the security check was turned up to 11.

The queue for the security check was enormous, thousands of people packed in a snaking queue filling up the place.

I've never been so scared flying as I stood in line looking at the doors to the parking lot, with nothing but people between.

It's important to remember that bombs are only ever dangerous on planes, and nobody would ever think of detonating a bomb in a packed security queue.

The kind of bombs an amateur can put together will probably do a lot less damage in an airport queue than on a 777. Seriously damage an airliner and like as not you can kill everyone on board, whereas the same bomb in even a busy public space will probably only kill a few dozen people at best (body blocking, etc).

Strictly talking from the perspective of inflicting maximal harm - That need not be the goal of a would-be bomber.

I think the goal is instilling fear, and honestly, making you fear crowds would be a terribly effective strategy.

Five to six large suitcases filled with explosives would likely do a lot of damage, and I saw several of them being wheeled by a single adult in or near the packed queue, as the queue spilled into the common areas.

And while it might be less casualties in terms of bodies than a large plane, I think it would be more effective in terms of terror as there would be much more people directly affected.

Imagine what it'd do to all those waiting in the check-in queues when they experience the explosion and the aftermath.

That's why it scared me so much. It would have been such an effective move, requiring little skill and few actors.

I've never been scared of such acts before or since.

Places that take terrorism threats seriously have multiple checkpoints spread out everywhere for that reason.

Not only large queues are an ideal spot to bomb if the goal is to make a lot of victims, but not having a well defined location for security checks makes it more difficult for terrorists to plan around.

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My visit on the lates Mobile Safari reports 2.7MB of storage usage, for what it’s worth. Although I have very strict content blocking policies.

Edit: 3.4MB when I remove the filters

It doesn't even load the page for me. Here's cached version: https://archive.is/tYRVg

Isn't it time to disband the TSA? So the security theater? "... no more intrusive or intensive than necessary..." I would say waiting on lines for hours, even being required to show up hours before is more intrusive than necessary.

https://archive.is/tYRVg

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